This is a management direction worth waiting for, because for a long time, before getting on a passenger car, passengers can know quite a lot, from fares, departure times, pick-up and drop-off points, car types, seat numbers to accompanying amenities. But more important information than anything is how safe that car company is, people find it very difficult to know.
How many vehicles a business has ever violated speed limits, whether drivers often violate driving time, how many times vehicles are fined, how safety management is carried out... are mostly not information that passengers can easily access before buying tickets.
Meanwhile, management agencies are having more and more data from journey monitoring devices, driver image recording devices, journey cameras, vehicle registration, traffic violation handling...
If these data are connected and used to build an objective rating system, each transportation business will have a "safe file" for passengers to refer to.
At that time, ranking not only serves state management but also gives people more choice.
Between two bus companies running on the same route, ticket prices are equivalent, vehicle quality is not too different, passengers can completely prioritize businesses with a higher safety rating.
And when customer choices are linked to safety rankings, businesses will also have more motivation to strictly manage drivers, maintain vehicles, control speed and comply with business conditions.
A business that continuously makes violations will not only face fines or administrative handling measures. They also risk losing prestige, losing customers and ultimately losing market share. That is the way to make safety a real competitive criterion of the passenger transport market.
Of course, to do this, the ranking criteria must be transparent, scientific and measurable. It is not possible to just base on the number of absolute violations, because a business with thousands of vehicles and tens of thousands of trips each year cannot be simply compared to a business with only a few dozen vehicles.
Criteria need to accurately reflect the level of compliance and risks, such as the rate of speeding violations per trip, driving time violations, vehicle technical condition, penalty history, traffic accidents and the responsibility of businesses in driver management. At the same time, ranking results must be updated regularly and publicly available where people can easily look up. If there is a ranking but passengers do not know where to find it, the ranking will lose most of its meaning.
Car company ranking, if actually implemented, will help each passenger have a very legitimate right before buying a ticket, which is the right to know how safe a trip they are choosing.
